[anticsapp]

I can't validate this but have been told this by multiple authors and SEO professionals. So it's anecdotal. One blogger apologized to me and told me she was embarrassed doing it but it's an industry practice. She explained it's because other recipe sites use automated scraping tools and republish their recipes in an effort to outrank original authors. The personal fluff helps slow them down. Also, a lot of recipes are bullshit, they manually steal them from elsewhere and change a few variables to evade copyright claims. Although, I guess changing a few variables is how cuisines evolve.

[kevinmchugh]

Recipes aren't copyrightable. It's bad manners to copy and republish one without attribution, but not illegal.

The introductory fluff is copyrightable, and that's one reason for it.

[logfromblammo]

Photographs, videos, or drawings of recipes in progress are copyrightable, and usually more helpful. Furthermore, they provide evidence that the recipe is actually viable.

That's why you shouldn't expect to make a cent from creating a new recipe, unless you have a chef and photographer/artist lined up, or own your own restaurant chain.

[AnonC]

Thanks. This makes sense. I was wondering what these fluff pieces have to do with SEO, because surely the search engines aren’t monitoring all users and how long they spend on each page in order to rank the usefulness of the content in their search results.

Bounce rates and how long a visitor stays on a page matter for those who own the sites and/or do some sort of marketing on them (ads, their own products, their services, etc.).

[dvtrn]

because surely the search engines aren’t monitoring all users and how long they spend on each page in order to rank the usefulness of the content in their search results.

Probably not the search engines, but I could imagine this being a thing that goes into Google Analytics if an online recipe property is using that (or if their blogging platform has a plugin for it) maybe? Just spitballing from the hip.

[greglindahl]

Yes, search engines monitor result clicks, bounce rates, dwell times, etc. They do affect ranking. And if you have Google analytics on your recipe site, Google has even more data about it.

[XCSme]

Are you implying that having Google Analytics on your page increases your Google ranking?

[greglindahl]

I don't know. I've always thought it should, and as a search engine CTO, I'd use the data that way. But I have no evidence either way.

[XCSme]

I think they specifically mentioned it does not affect it, someone asked that question in a webinar. If it would affect it, than it could be abused (eg. just send 10k bots that spend 1 hour on the site), plus a longer session doesn't necessarily mean a better site or better user experience. Google itself is a good example, where the point of Google is to spend as little time as possible on their page, as it's just a step between the user and his destination.